Intel XDK: An HTML5 development IDE

It&#x27;s a good idea and apparently a slick package, but useless due to the restrictive license and binary-only distribution.<p>I certainly won&#x27;t build and distribute mobile apps with whatever obscure (and non-removable according to ToS) &quot;security features&quot; Intel has decided to bundle with the runtime e.g. to comply with arbitrary requests by various rogue government agencies.<p>If they want us to build HTML5 apps for their own sake (Intel&#x27;s, they want to fight back against native ARM binaries), they&#x27;ll have to try harder. Make it Open Source and ask a lawyer who hasn&#x27;t been stuck in corporate litigation and patenting stuff for several decades to write a modern license (or use the LGPL&#x2F;BSD&#x2F;MIT license...).

It is based on AppMobi that Intel bought some months ago. AppMobi was an alternative to PhoneGap, but it attempted to streamline the whole process of wrapping an HTML5 app into a native app, with an &quot;IDE&quot; (more of a GUI for the build process) and a cloud-based assembly and provisioning platform. And of course a lot of proprietary APIs for stuff like in-app payments, social integration, etc.<p>I tried AppMobi early on but as a developer I much prefer something open like PhoneGap, even if (or because) I have to glue the pieces together by myself. I don&#x27;t really see the demographic that knows how to develop an HTML5 web application but prefers a closed black-box environment for putting together the mobile app.<p>The AppMobi XDK was pretty slick though. But from the announcement it seems like they pretty much tore it down and started over from scratch.<p>These days I hold higher hopes for real convert-to-native tools, that actually translates HTML5 (f.ex. the canvas API) to native code.

If you&#x27;re curious why Intel is making an HTML5 IDE and what their goals are, you can check out this blog post: <a href="http://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/blogs/why-intel-xdk-new" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;software.intel.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;html5&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;why-intel-xdk-ne...</a>

After playing with it, seems like Brackets (anecdotal guess, though I&#x27;m pretty confident) wrapped with a bunch of mobile device stuff ala Ripple (does intel own ripple now?) combined with a pretty deep build system.<p>Could be really handy for making quick apps for conferences or hi-fi prototypes imo. Particularly the cross platform build system - seems really easy.

Seems like the most advanced node-webkit [1] application so far. Great to see how node.js is used for more and more crossplatform non-web apps. <i>Cites Atwoods law here...</i><p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rogerwang&#x2F;node-webkit</a>

Why <i>must</i> I signup to Intel XDK ? This <i>should</i> be optional

Am I the only one who finds the UI is horribly ugly? The tabs make no sense. Why is it all hogging the ide space when most of the things are rarely used (services, build) - why not put them in the menu?<p>Products likes these are what give HTML5 a bad name.

Incredible, the website looks terrible on tablets and phones.

Really great engine, I highly recommend it. I&#x27;m even looking for somebody who would know how to write native bridge plugins for it (or convert existing phonegap ones) - I just want alarm clock controls that actually work on iOS (android is easy). Anybody?

It is too bad that XDK is still on Cordova 2.9. 3.3 is out now and is a big jump from 2.x.

I love the Linux support, but why the IDE theme is so ugly?

is it open source ?

Why does an IDE require a username and password to use it?

Disappointed to see that it&#x27;s Windows only.